Technologies of the self in bioart practices

Abstract

The practices of art, biology and technology constitute a useful case study to discuss the complex dialogues and tensions concerning identity and biotechnology. The history of bioart (from the eighties of the twentieth century to the first decades of the twenty-first century) allows us to analyse the transformations experienced in the conceptualization of the self, understood as a technological device. The conceptualization of identity as a technology challenges our inherited humanist notions, while opening the door to the discursive and material construction of relational identities from a post-anthropocentric point of view. Taking specific bioartistic practices as a case of study, three milestones are identified and proposed in the history of bioart: first, addressing the assimilation between genome, textuality and mechanisms of identification; second, analysing the surveillance and control procedures inscribed in the genetic model of identity; and, third, exploring the possibilities of relational openness provided by multispecies practices.